Several people have suggested that we might want to add more combat moves, in order to spice up the game. What I’m going to suggest now are several ‘advanced’ combat moves: things you can do instead of the normal combat moves, and that are superior to them in some but not all circumstances. What they are not is big new additions to the attack/defend/concentrate paradigm – though I am of course very interested in suggestions in that direction.
Roll
You attempt to roll under your opponent’s attack, avoiding it and ending up in an excellent position for a counterattack.
Rolling works just like dodging (and calls the dodge action), but with these differences: (1) if you get hit, your opponent deals 2 extra damage; (2) if you don’t get hit, and you attack your opponent on the next action, you get a +1 attack bonus and a +1 damage bonus.
The rolling action is really bad if there is a good chance that you’ll be hit, but it is an excellent way to punish an opponent who attacks you even though he has little chance to hit you.
Block
You focus all your attention on parrying your opponent’s attack.
Blocking works just like parrying (and calls the parry action), but with these differences: (1) you get an additional +n defence bonus, where n is your current concentration; (2) you lose all your concentration, even if you are not damaged.
The blocking action is good if you will probably lose your concentration from this attack, because you can use the concentration to ward off damage instead. Of course, if you don’t need the extra defence bonus, using blocking is a very bad idea.
Rush
You rush towards your opponent in a desperate attempt to hit him.
Rushing works just like attacking (and calls the attacking action), but with these differences: (1) you get a +2 attack bonus; (2) until the beginning of your second turn hereafter, all attacks against you are made at +2 attack and +2 damage, and you cannot rush, roll or block.
The rushing action is good if you really need to break some guy’s maximal concentration, or if both of you are down to just a few hit points; it sucks against groups.
What do you think? Obviously, the numbers can be tweaked. (Maybe rush should just give a +1 bonus?)
All cool ideas! Some of the rooms for Kerkerkruip have already been built (including Victor’s room where size matters and my rooms which change stats due to tension. Another idea for a room would be to change the effect on size based on tension (i.e. a room with growing stalactites / stalagmites). I am also working on a ‘Arena of the Fallen’, which will allow the player the opportunity to resurrect one fiend of the past, thus allowing to absorb a lost power. Of course, this is a one time offer only, letting the player decide which soul he rescues in order to steal it back, perhaps at the sacrifice of some stat points, HP or other resources. Putting these personal interests aside, I’m definitely volunteering for a checkup of the rooms.
About blood magic: Cool! A related idea: would it be interesting to give the player the ability to destroy such a blood magic strengthened item in return for a one-time huge bonus (e.g. 2 or 2.5 times the original blood bonus on strength 1.5 times the bonus on damage)? This would give the player an extra decision point, which is potentially interesting (do I sacrifice the weapon to save my skin or do I take the chance to fight the opponent with just the weapon?).
About Malygris his MPD: Cool!
Regarding religion: This can be as big or as small as you want it to be. The first thing could be that one can only be blessed by one god to get his full benefit. Furthermore, this could give an attack or defensive bonus (dependent on the god) versus other religious persons (i.e. acolytes of other gods). I’m not certain whether a fully developed religious system would be beneficial, though… Since Kerkerkruip is small and has a short play span, the interesting choices in other roguelikes (such as DCSS or even ADOM or Nethack) would be difficult to implement.
Regarding themes: Instead of manipulating the random factor, would it perhaps be interesting to use it more of as a reward, i.e. an extreme risky fight with a strong level 0 monster for one of these key components? I find it a bit too easy to manipulate the random modifier; it makes play possibly a bit to predictable…
About attacks: Perhaps a ‘Bull rush’ action could be interesting: Using BR, one can try to push over the opponent. When successful, the opponent is lying, unable to do anything else than trying to stand. If it is a failure, you trip yourself, lying down. Perhaps its roll is also partly modified by body and size.
I like the advanced combat actions! I was thinking about fundamental actions (on the level of Attack/Concentrate/Defend) when I mentioned this before, but I agree that these would add spice. Here’s an idea for another one:
Fall Back: This is a mindful dodge, and works just like a dodge, but the dodge operates under a -2 penalty. If it is successful, you gain a level of concentration. If it fails, the attack does an additional +2 damage.
Regarding biomes: What if the dungeon as a whole were themed? Some rooms could be skinned–the Bridge of Doom, for example, could equally well span an icy lake as a pool of lava. (Ice on the bridge could add a new level of danger, as well.) The Entrance Hall could shine with crystalline stalagmites of ice, or arcing ropes of flame, as easily as rubies. Indeed, changing the furniture of the Entrance Hall would be a nice way to signal to the player that the dungeon theme has changed.
Other rooms might only appear in one or another theme.
Dungeon content, including monsters, might also be tied to a particular theme. Perhaps the existence of the overmind is tied to a particular theme of the dungeon (the overmind is described here), for example. Or the necromancer Malygris appears in a dungeon with special features.
I like that. We could have special dungeon layouts: a “subterranean lake” layout, a “lava river” layout, and so on, which are chosen at random. There might indeed be layout-specific rooms and skinable rooms. But this would be a lot of work – I don’t want to commit to this feature for Kerkerkruip 8.
A dungeon normally has 11 special rooms right? With 3-4 rooms per biome that would give us 3-4 biomes, and we can use just a few tunnels to link them up. I’m not thinking there would be a lot of biome constraints, just enough to keep them contiguous.
When I get the time I’ll try to put some code together that will do what I’m thinking of.
I’m not too keen on having more combat actions, but I know a lot of people like them. Can I suggest that we have a UI change that will let us know what actions are available to us?
As it stands, this cannot work. Your dodge bonus is generally +2, so getting a -2 penalty would make this into a really bad version of just concentrating. Even if you have a +3 dodge penalty, which is about as favourable as it gets, it would still be a bad version of concentrating (because generally, a +1 defence bonus won’t be worth the risk of getting 2 extra damage).
There doesn’t really seem to be a niche for this action to fill – concentrating is what you should do when your enemy is overeager to attack you, and you do not have a lot of concentration to lose. Falling back would be good in the exact same circumstances, I guess. Any ideas about how it could be fixed?
My intention for this command was that it would be useful in combat against multiple foes, when you really need to have a decent level of concentration to hit anyone, but you rarely have a free moment to concentrate because of all the attacks coming your way. The idea was that you could gamble with this move to get the concentration you need. But your analysis suggests that I was blissfully unaware of how things actually worked, and that just concentrating was as good as this move would be.
It sounds like if there is to be any move that fits what I was going for, it should have time-delayed repercussions, rather than synchronous ones. In other words, I can dodge normally and get concentration–but then I pay for that with some other debuff later… I don’t have any ideas on that now, but I might give it a think.
I don’t think I like the idea of adding new react-only actions. As it is, I have a terrible time figuring out if there’s any difference at all between dodging and parrying. I wouldn’t mind if some of the features of “roll” and “block” were incorporated into “dodge” and “parry,” but I wouldn’t want separate choices. I do like the “bull rush” idea - an attack that does no damage, can be used as a reaction, breaks concentration if it hits, and forces the enemy to “regroup” if it it would have done high damage. But it would be fine for this to be a special ability. I guess “stun” already does some of that.
I go through a lot of battles trying “dodge” and “parry” alternately, just to see if there is a different bonus given. Most of the time there isn’t. To make the game interesting, I think there should always be some kind of difference. But even when there is a difference, it’s still hard to guess - is it hard to dodge enormous fists because they’re so big, or hard to parry them because they’re so heavy? It’s even harder to guess with opponents who are difficult to visualize, like the demon of rage. I think somebody mentioned that parrying can cause the attacker to drop their weapon, but I’ve never seen that happen with anything besides the chain golem - plus, many opponents don’t have a weapon to drop.
Picking up the discussion on scroll identification:
I think Dannii said that the likelihood of getting a “good” scroll increases every time you search the pile of body parts? If so, this constitutes a piece of information that will be lost if you don’t take notes (and be very hard to figure out if you haven’t learned of it in a spoilery way). Perhaps the “cheap” scrolls could be identified by the materials they are made of all the time? Or at least, cheaply made scrolls could be unable to hold expensive spells?
Maybe this would be too subtle, but perhaps the shorter spell names could indicate cheapness.
Someone mentioned being able to classify scrolls as offensive, defensive, and sorcerous. But if I were looking for category information, I’d prefer to know whether something is useful in or out of combat. A “short” or “simple” or “brittle” or “vibrating” scroll would be for quick reading in the heat of battle. A “lengthy” or “intricate” or “heavy” or “pulsating” scroll would be for preparation outside of combat.
An example I just encountered: The claymore is “good at parrying,” but when fighting the chain golem, parrying and dodging both give a -2 bonus equally. So what exactly does “good at parrying” mean?
Another idea: When an attacker is using fists, parrying successfully should do damage to the attacker… at least in the case where the weapon would have been dropped otherwise. If that’s too powerful, maybe it should give the attacker an attack penalty that lasts until the attacker heals.
A separate question: What’s the story with the hiding ability now? I remember there were some changes, maybe in Kerkerkruip 2, but I don’t know how to use it effectively anymore. I’ve used the scroll of shadows three or four times, and every single time I was detected as soon as I entered the room.
Sorry to keep pestering folks, but there’s something else that bugged me:
When you put a scroll in the scroll analyzer, you still have it. But when you put something in the forge or the alchemist’s machine, you have to pick it up. This is especially problematic with the forge - I always imagine that you’re just holding your readied weapon in the flames. Unfortunately, I end up fighting with my bare hands when I do this. Recently I did it with the temporary adamantine blade and lost precious turns because of my mistake.
Another issue with the temporary blade: I readied the glass cannon early in the game and was pretty happy with my choice. But then I read an unknown scroll, which turned out to be the scroll of the blade. So I had to continue with the glass cannon penalty even though I didn’t intend to unready it. Maybe that’s fair, but it’s another thing that makes me think the glass cannon is a useless weapon. Does anyone else use it?
Some questions about the glass cannon:
After readying the glass cannon, are all your health bonuses halved for the rest of the game, in addition to your current health? Even when you’re not wielding it anymore?
If you ready it a second time, does your health get quartered?
I noticed that it gets destroyed when you throw a fragmentation grenade. Do you get destroyed too if you’re wielding it?
I finally figured out that the flickering lights make hiding easier. I also managed to hide in Phantasmagoria for a while. Is it easier there? What about in the hall of mirrors or the entrance hall? Does the menacing statue make hiding easier? (I have no idea what the statue does… maybe it’s a ment thing? I always forget to use ment.)
Maybe there should be a message when you’re hidden - “You remain hidden in the shadows cast by the flickering lights,” or “There is no good place to hide here. The reaper has detected you!”
The menacing statue has a chance to explode randomly, doing damage to all actors in the room.
The glass cannon is extremely powerful, and I use it once I’m ready to take on Level 4+ creatures. The source code suggests that, yes, readying the glass cannon twice will halve your health again:
After readying the glass cannon:
say "You feel fragile.";
now permanent health of player is permanent health of the player divided by 2;
now health of the player is health of the player divided by 2;
if player is dead:
end the story saying "You were a little too fragile for that.".
I’m not sure if that’s fair. It should probably be “After readying the glass cannon for the first time”.
I have suggested that the cannon could possibly be made into a blood magic item, since the concept is similar (give your health to an object to increase its efficacy), and if that happens, the glass cannon would at least seem more of a piece with other elements in the game, and you would have some control over how powerful it becomes. (Blood magic is on the slate for release 8.)
Capmikee, I’d personally prefer it if you’d use the edit button to put all your thoughts in one post. Your choice, of course, but that would make it easier to quote and reply.
I agree with you that the dodge/parry distinction, or rather the lack of a clear dodge/parry distinction, is a design weakness in Kerkerkruip that should at some point be addressed. I’ll think about it! The new combat actions won’t solve this problem, but they won’t suffer from it either. (Parrying doesn’t cause your opponent to drop his weapon, by the way.)
There is no distinction between cheap and expensive scrolls in the game; and in fact, there are no useless scrolls. The potentially harmful scrolls (death, summoning, ghoulification) can be very good in the right circumstances.
It is the case that there is some hard-to-find-out stuff going on when scrolls are generated for the pile of body parts, but I’m not sure that this is a problem. It just means that someone who is familiar with the source code has a very slight advantage here (the scroll still might be anything, but you know a little more about the probabilities).
I’ve added something a little bit in this direction to the current build of the game, namely, manuals of magic that identify all scrolls of a certain type when you read them. So you might find the book “Battle Magic for Beginners”, and reading it identifies all scrolls of the blade and scrolls of protection. Let’s see if this has the desired effect on the idenfitication mini-game, and if not, we’ll reconsider stuff like the above.
Your parry bonus is determined both by how good your weapon is at parrying, and how easy the attacker’s weapon can be parried. (The game uses the lower of the two values.) Perhaps we need to make parrying and dodging more transparent by showing more info about it in the “x monster” information, though. It’s something I’ll put in my rethinking the basics of combat proposal.
In fact, you can’t parry with your fists, because if someone hit you in the fists with a sword… well, you know, that just counts as hitting you. So parrying without a readied weapon always gives you a +0 defence bonus.
That might just have been bad luck, but keep an eye out on whether this keeps happening. Hiding has been made somewhat harder recently (there was a bug that made it easier than I had intended), but it definitely should not be useless.
Yeah, that might need to be changed. I’ll make an issue about it on github.
It is the best weapon in the game, in my opinion. I always ready it more or less immediately, and often win with it. But yes, such a game can be ruined by an unidentified scroll of the blade!
Your maximum health is halved. Any health bonuses you got from powers will be removed in their entirety (not just half of them) when you lose that power, but any health bonuses of new powers will be added in full. So readying the glass cannon as soon as possible is both risky and potentially very rewarding.
Yes.
No, but it can get destroyed when you’re wielding it. Also, don’t parry with it. Bad idea.
Readying the glass cannon is supposed to be very risky. No going back. No swapping between it and other weapons if the glass cannon defence penalty becomes problematic. I must admit I like the current implementation, but let me know if you don’t.
I’m not sold on the idea. Blood magic is about taking risks before going into an easy fight or during a fight that you are winning; it is a design element that tempts the player to turn easy fights into risky fights. But the glass cannon is very different: it is about making a one time choice to play the rest of the game as a very fragile and very deadly character. I think it would be a pity to lose that.
No, I agree that there should be no going back on the glass cannon. But if I want to use, say, a dagger for one fight, then switch back to the glass cannon, should I really lose another half of my health? Maybe so, but it seems crueler than necessary…
That sounds like a good defense of the status quo. My idea was that the glass cannon could be just as good a weapon under blood magic, only you’d have to do it to yourself. You put a whole bunch of your health into it (maybe the text tells you that the cannon “is greedy for more” until it’s been fed a lot), and you’ve self-sacrificed yourself into a broken wreck–but one with a really powerful weapon. But there’s certainly something to be said for making that dramatic state of affairs inherent to equipping the item as opposed to something that you can choose to do on a smaller scale.
